Thursday, October 28, 2010

Scientists Excited by Arctic Ocean Ridge Finds

The floor of the Arctic Ocean is one of the last frontiers on Earth, and mapping it was thought to be an impossible tasktoo much ice, too remote, too difficult.

But on its inaugural research expedition, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy, a specially designed icebreaker equipped for science, has returned with highly detailed maps, exotic life forms, and new discoveries of volcanic activity below the ice cap.

"This was an epic journey in search of geological knowledge from a remote corner of the Earth," said Peter Michael, chief scientist for the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge Expedition (AMORE). The AMORE expedition was a joint project with Germany. The Healy and Germany's icebreaker Polarstern traveled to the Arctic from July 31 to October 3.

The co-chief scientist on the journey, Charles Langmuir of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, compared the Arctic expedition to the major discoveries of early U.S. explorers. The icebreakers' findings will provide fertile ground for new exploration over the next decade, he said.

"We have completely unexpected results," said Langmuir. "The ocean ridge below the Arctic is completely unique. We found 12 new volcanoes where we expected to find none, and we found unexpected and abundant hydrothermal activity."

The Gakkel Ridge

The Arctic expedition, funded by the National Science Foundation, focused on the northern end of the mid-ocean ridge. The ridge is a volcanically active mountain range, 52,000 miles (84,000 kilometers) long, that runs beneath the North and South Atlantic Oceans, the Arctic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and the South Pacific.

"Ocean ridges are like great gashes in the Earth, where hot rock from the Earth's core is forced up," said Henry Dick, a marine geologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and also a co-chief scientist of the expedition.

The Gakkel Ridge is the deepest and most remote portion of the global mid-ocean ridge system. It extends 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) from north of Greenland to Siberia, lying about three miles (five kilometers) beneath the Arctic ice cap.

Scientists study the mid-ocean ridge to better understand how the Earth's mantle was formed. The theory is that volcanic eruptions beneath the ocean create new oceanic crust, which then moves away from the ridge. This process, known as seafloor spreading, is thought to underlie the movement of continents.

"Unlike volcanoes on land, which are tall and conical in shape, undersea volcanoes are long, linear, and oozing," said Langmuir. Volcanoes on land don't spread.

The Gakkel Ridge is the slowest spreading ridge in the world, spreading at a rate of one centimeter (less than half an inch) a year. Ridges in other parts of the mid-ocean range spread up to 18 centimeters (7 inches) a year. Because it is so slow-spreading, scientists expected there would be very little volcanic activity along the Gakkel Ridge.